My ‘terminal’ breast cancer is now cured thanks to miracle jab

A WOMAN who had drawn up her “bucket list” after being told she had just months to live appears to have been cured of advanced breast cancer by a breakthrough jab.

Judy Perkins had tumours the size of plums in her liver after the drugresistant cancer had spread through her body.

After seven types of chemotherapy had failed she feared she would not survive. But the revolutionary immunotherapy treatment enabled the 52-year-old’s own white blood cells to totally destroy her tumours.

Ms Perkins, an engineer from Florida, US, has been cancer-free for two years following the injection, administered by the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

She said: “My condition deteriorated a lot towards the end and I had a tumour pressing on a nerve, which meant I spent my time trying not to move to avoid pain shooting down my arm. I had given up fighting.

“But after the treatment dissolved most of my tumours, I was able to go for a 40-mile hike.

“I went from being on morphine and a lot of painkillers to stopping taking them all in one go.

“It feels miraculous and I am beyond amazed that I have now been free of cancer for two years. Experts call it extended remission – I call it a cure.”

US doctors adopted an experimental approach combining two different forms of immunotherapy following the failure of other treatment.

The effect was extraordinary, leading to regression of the rapidly spreading cancer growing in her liver.

British experts yesterday described the study as “exciting”. It is a world first in using “adoptive cell transfer”, to treat breast cancer and is hoped to be available for a wider group within

BLOOD TEST DETECTS HEART ATTACK IN MINUTES

A NEW blood test that diagnoses heart attacks in 15 minutes could free up doctors’ time and save the NHS millions of pounds a year.

Scientists say A&E medics could make an almost immediate heart attack diagnosis without samples being sent to a lab.

The new blood test analyses a cardiac protein – cMyC – whose levels increase rapidly after a heart attack.

People currently suspected of a heart attack are tested for a different protein – troponin – when they arrive in A&E and again three hours later.

But on-the-spot blood tests on more than 700 patients found that cMyC was present 95 per cent of five years. The American Society of Clinical Oncology showcased the findings this week. In the US one in eight women get breast cancer, but traditional treatments including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation put many into remission.

The survival rate for breast cancer in the industrialised world is high – if diagnosed before spreading from the breast. There is a 99 per cent survival rate over the next five years.

But the rate falls in later stages, with just a 27 per cent five-year survival rate when it has spread.

Only 15 per cent respond so well to immunotherapy – which harnesses the body’s immune system.

The National Cancer Institute in the US removed a tumour from Ms Perkins’ chest to determine her unique ‘signature’ – the genetic mutations which make each person’s cancer different. They discovered 62 mutations, the time in those who had suffered a heart attack.

The figure was just 40 per cent for the protein troponin.

Study leader Dr Tom Kaier at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, said: “It is important to work out early who has had a heart attack.

“Now we know this test is sensitive enough to give an almost immediate heart attack diagnosis, we need to work on developing a testing device.

“We’d love to see this used in A&E departments in five years.”

The study was presented to the British Cardiovascular Society Conference in Manchester. but found she had white blood cells able to destroy four of those mutations.

They boosted her immune system by taking hundreds of these immune T-cells and grew them into an army of 82 billion cells.

The process took eight weeks and then the white blood cells were injected back into her body.

Scientists also used one of a range of new immunotherapy drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors”, to overcome a cancer’s ability to shield itself from the body’s immune system.

Southampton General Hospital’s Professor Peter Johnson said: “This is another piece of evidence confirming that some cancers are recognisable by the body’s immune system and that – if this can be stimulated in the right way – even cancers that have spread to different parts of the body may be treatable.”